Finance & Commercial Director

Job purpose

The Director of Finance and Commercial will oversee a newly formed Directorate covering a wide range of functions including the Finance, Procurement and Commercial teams within The National Archives.

Strong financial, commercial and leadership skills are required within this role, together with the ability to gain a deep understanding of The National Archives’ strategic objectives, to manage our spend in an environment of reducing resources, and maximise our commercial opportunities.

Priorities

- As part of the Executive Team, lead The National Archives effectively as an ambitious, visionary and dynamic organisation in a rapidly changing environment and challenging economic circumstances.

- Further enhance the user engagement across The National Archives’ diverse audiences in an era of increasing expectations.

- Be an active member of the wider Senior Civil Service, working with colleagues across government.

- Develop the organisation’s capability by utilising the talent of all staff, ensuring they have the skills and leadership necessary for the future.

Key responsibilities

Leadership

- Grow skills and talent within The National Archives, giving direction and leadership to nurture and encourage financial awareness and commercial acumen

Financial and Procurement

- Ensuring there is understanding of and compliance with all aspects of Managing Public Money supporting and upholding the Accounting Officer’s responsibilities

- Ensuring that resources are strongly aligned to delivery plans and milestones in business planning within the overall financial context

- Providing strong and tailored management information and value added analysis to support effective decisions by the Executive Team and the Board

- Ensuring the delivery of consistent, robust, timely and relevant financial information across The National Archives to support better management of resources and more effective business decision making, and making sure the Executive Team is fully aware of the financial consequences of their strategic planning

- Overseeing the in-year monitoring and year end processes to ensure no key control totals are breached and to assure the delivery of timely and unqualified Resource Accounts to Parliament

- Leading the procurement team ensuring that the needs of The National Archives are understood and resourced appropriately, ensuring the correct level of support to all high risk / high value procurements

Commercial

- Drive the development of our trading services to deliver a positive net contribution to The National Archives’ overall finances

- Bring strong P&L and marketing discipline to the management of our trading services, ensuring that we are maximising our impact

- Where appropriate support commercial negotiations to ensure that we make robust and appropriately risk-assessed deals with key partners

- Create new models of service provision including what we should do ourselves and what we should do through others

Person specification

Essential

- A CCAB or overseas equivalent qualified accountant
- Strong experience of strategy development, ideally in a B2C environment
- Strong evidence of well-developed commercial acumen, and success
- A proven ability to drive innovation and deliver transformational change
- Very strong negotiation and influencing skills
- Ability to deliver through others and ensure strong buy-in to concepts and ideas
- Leadership skills, with the ability to inspire and motivate people
- Very strong stakeholder engagement and communication skills

Desirable

- Public sector experience, or a strong understanding of the dynamics and differences of leading and working in the public sector